Page:Recollections of My Boyhood.djvu/41



The train which arrived here at this time was a detachment of the company which came out to Oregon this season and numbered ten families and probably twenty wagons. The entire emigration of 1843 has been computed at about a thousand souls. This detachment included the three Applegate families; families of three brothers, Charles, Lindsay and Jesse. I call to mind also the names of Alexander McClellan, Wm. Wilson, Wm. Doke, Robert Smith, Benjamin Williams, Mr. Clyman, John G. Baker, Elijah Millican, Thomas Naylor, Almoran Hill, Miles Cary, and Daniel Holman.

Besides the oxen of the teams, there was a small herd of stock cattle. Jesse Applegate had probably thirty head and others had a few cows and calves. There were also a few horses. This train of wagons corraled for the last time about one hundred yards, so it appears to me, up the river from the fort and very near where the Walla Walla River flows into the Columbia.

A train of wagons with their once white, now torn, grease and dust stained covers, parked on the bank of the Columbia River, was a novel spectacle. Such had never been seen there before. The faithful oxen, now sore-necked, sore-footed, and jaded, which had marched week after week, and month after month, drawing those wagons with their loads from the Missouri River to the Columbia, had done their task, and were unhitched for the last time, and I hope, all recovered from their fatigue and lived to enjoy a long rest on the banks, "Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound save his own dashing."

Mr. McKinley was in charge of the post of Walla Walla, and was very kind and accommodating to the emigrants. There were many Indians here: bucks, squaws, and papooses, and these were often visitors at our camp. Some of the bucks talked English fairly well, and all were clever at sign language. There had been at this place mission establishments, both